
It’s a good-news, bad-news week, regarding the 225,000 Chinese-made personal respirators the National Nuclear Security Administration ordered to protect employees and contractors from COVID-19. Good news, they’re still coming. Bad news, at a 70% price premium, compared what the agency thought it would pay. The semi-autonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapons agency had to cough up the extra money after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the KN95-rated respirators that the stockpile steward’s small business supplier wanted to source from…